Pokémon TCG Pocket is a card collector’s dream

While the mainstream popularity of the Pokémon Trading Card Game has ebbed and flowed since its launch in 1998, it has always enjoyed a cult following. That’s earned it a spot at the top of the genre alongside games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh. It’s grown in popularity and complexity in the past 25 years, evolving from a simple card game that lived alongside the anime and mainline Pokémon video games to having its own obsessive fanbase, competitive scene, and world championship events.

Battling has always been at the core of the Pokémon world, but another aspect of the game has always reigned supreme: catching them all. And that’s exactly what Nintendo wants to get back to with its new mobile game.

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, launching this October on Android and iOS, is all about opening booster packs and growing your card collection. Being a seasoned Pokémon trainer surely won’t hurt your chances of amassing an impressive card collection here, but the new app is all about making the card game approachable for newcomers and celebrating art.

I went hands-on with Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket ahead of its launch and found myself in an absolute trance digitally opening pack after pack. Just be wary of complicated microtransactions that will be hard to fully ignore if you’re looking to collect them all.

Gotta catch ’em all (again)

Pocket fills a specific niche in the current Pokémon game landscape. It’s designed to be a friendly alternative to more competitive Pokémon titles like Pokémon TCG Live, the popular free-to-play Pokémon Unite. It also strays away from lore-heavy entries like the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Keita Hirobe, an executive officer at The Pokémon Company, tells me that the project is meant to be more welcoming.

“We’ve always had this idea that there should be a [Pokémon Trading Card Game] option for people who don’t want to buy physical cards or might live in parts of the world where it’s difficult to get [physical cards] in order to play,” Hirobe explained in a media roundtable at the preview event. “This digital option with free cards will lower the barrier to entry for players.”

As someone who hasn’t opened a physical pack of Pokémon cards for probably 15 years and has only dabbled in the trading card game, I can that I had an absolute blast opening booster packs to add to my Pocket collection. It truly brings back that feeling on anticipation I had of opening packs as a young collector, but without the letdown of spending my hard-earned money on a pack without a rare card inside. While I’m not a regular viewer of Pokémon TCG pack-opening content, I will definitely be hopping on daily to open boosters when the game launches.

Players will get two free packs every day just for logging into the app, choosing between three specific ones of the currently available set. The first set that’ll be available at launch is called Genentic Apex and features top-tier cards for Pikachu, Charizard, and Mewtwo. Each booster pack will contain five cards. There’s also a feature called Wonder Pick, which will allow you to peruse opened packs by other players and try your luck at snagging a copy of one of their earned cards.

The game is initially launching with support for nine languages, and players will be able to collect foreign language versions of cards through trading.

Pocket has an eight-tier rarity system for available cards. It starts off with simple, plain common cards, moves into basic holographic versions, and tops out with 3D variations of rare Pokémon and exclusive “immersive” cards that expand into detailed comic-book-style scenes when examined. The Mewtwo immersive card, which was teased in the game’s initial trailer, shows the famous scene of Mewtwo breaking free from its restraints in the lab it was created in.

The digital nature of the game allows for some really interesting 3D effects on the rarer cards that help them pop off the screen. You can also add unique flares and effects to cards yourself as you unlock and earn them as you play. The animation and sound design for the game as a whole is fantastic as well. Through lots of testing, the team was able to replicate the exact way a card pack sounds when being ripped into and the background tunes throughout are light and fun.

Once you’ve built up your card collection, you can put them into cute digital binders to show off to your friends and apply cosmetics like custom card backs and binder covers.

Representatives from The Pokémon Company and Creatures did not give any details on other set releases or what the cadence will look like for new content, but assured us that it would be regular enough to keep players engaged.

Everyone wants to fight

While card-collecting is the focus of Pocket, putting your Pokémon to the test in battle is still a big piece of the game.

Players will be able to build custom decks, fill out pre-made deck recipes with their cards, and even rent advanced decks to play a simplified version of the trading card game. The gameplay is mainly the same as the physical card game but significantly stripped down. Decks contain just 20 cards compared to the usual 60, HP is auto-calculated, energy is generated each turn, and prize cards are eliminated. Players will race to earn three points (one point for knocking out an enemy Pokémon and two points if it’s an EX card) to earn a victory.

While the game isn’t as quick as a round of Marvel Snap, it’s significantly shorter than the standard physical Pokémon TCG match. Players are limited to 20 minutes apiece for actions each match, but I never came close to hitting that threshold in my rounds. You won’t be able to hop on and play a complete match during a commercial break or while waiting in line at the grocery store, but you can definitely fit a few in during a bus ride or between meetings at work.

Players will be able to face off against AI offline, their friends in private matches or jump online to play against strangers, earning experience points and other rewards as they rack up victories. For folks uninterested in battling, there is an auto-battle feature that lets an AI play for you just to get experience, but it’s not an instant win.

Time to sell your golden nuggets

Like any free-to-play game, Pocket does have several built-in microtransactions for players who want to grow their collection faster. You don’t need to spend any money to enjoy the game and collect Pokémon — you can certainly grow quite the collection without spending a dime an relying on XP and in-game missions to earn new cards — but representatives from The Pokémon Company implied that it would be nearly impossible to collect all available card variations without paying to open additional packs.

While the gameplay and collection aspects are very streamlined, the in-game currencies feel designed to be as complicated as possible. At no point during my nearly two-hour session with Pocket was I entirely sure what currency I was using the unlock what — I just sort of tapped around until something worked.

Players can purchase Poké Gold with real money, which can be exchanged for packs. Shop Tickets are earned through battling and completing missions and can be used to purchase cosmetics. Emblem Tickets are earned by completing collections and can be used to buy a different set of cosmetics. Special Shop tickets are earned by consuming rare cards and can be used for accessories like new playmats.

When I played, I was constantly earning Shinedust, which can be used to create specific cards. But I needed so much to create a card that I never got that point in my over 90 minutes of hands-on time.

There are also a couple of items to earn within the Wonder Pick system: hourglasses that affect your Wonder Pick cooldown or allow you to pick more, and then something called Rewind Watch that allows you to look at expired Wonder Pick packs.

If you’re confused, you aren’t alone. Surely, once you play the game for some time the whole system will make sense, but the division of everything definitely feels like a bit much so far.

All things considered, Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket seems like a fun way to explore the world of Pokémon daily without having to commit to spending money or getting caught up with the details of more complex Pokémon titles. Like the early stages of Pokémon Go when it was all about catching new Pokémon (before competitive battling, caring about stats, and limited-time events), Pocket is a great way to become a Pokémon master, casually.

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is set to release on October 30 on Android and iOS, and you can predownload the app now.